Tour de France

Tour de France 2015, Stage 7: Start time, TV schedule, route and live stream

Tony Martin was having the Tour de France of his life, so the cruelest Tour ever took it away from him. What horrors does Stage 7 have in store?

By Louis Bien@louisbien Jul 10, 2015, 5:00am EDT

Stage 6 was so close to being the first run-of-the-mill day on the Tour de France. The wind was calm, the sun was out. Most importantly, riders were staying upright. The beginning of the Tour was badly marred by crashes, with Stage 3 being the worst. Two pile-ups in quick succession forced medical crews to be spread so thin that racing had to be suspended then neutralized for 25 minutes. On Thursday, the peloton got within a few hundred meters of a clean sheet before disaster struck.

Podium Cafe beautifully broke down the moment-by-moment effect of Tony Martin accidentally touching Bryan Coquard's back wheel. It begins with Martin's bike wobbling, and after six or seven other general classification contenders go down, it ends with the news that Martin suffered a broken collarbone and would have to abandon the Tour.

Martin had been riding in the yellow jersey. His team went ape when he went solo on Stage 4 to seize it. He was easily the best story of the Tour thus far, and because of a wobble his Tour done.

Stage 7 ought to be a day for the sprinters, which means little action for 98 percent of the stage, and certainly nothing much out of the riders vying for the final podium in Paris. It'll run 190.5 kilometers from Livarot to Fougères through Normandy with just a hint of Brittany at the end. It's a fine day to be blissfully bored taking in the scenery and Phil Liggett's history lessons.

Friday could be fun, just as long as (knocks on wood) nothing (rubs rabbit's foot) else (donates to any charity) goes (confesses all sins to all deities) wrong (please). Sure, the drama has been exciting for fans, but there are 15 stages to go and at this rate, there will be no one left to take a victory lap along the Champs-Élysées.

If you've been watching the Tour de France all along, then you know the drill. NBCSN has television coverage beginning at 8 a.m. ET, though racing will have started at 6:40 a.m. Mobile users can watch for free using the NBC Live Extra app, assuming they have NBCSN as part of their cable package. Anyone watching on a computer will have to subscribe to NBC's web package for the Tour de France.